Download 1. How to Teach Adjectives

How to Teach Adjectives
Adjectives:
 Teach that an adjective describes a noun. Adjectives tell which one?
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What kind? And how many?
Ask student to think of a noun such as a dog. Ask student to write many
adjectives to describe the dog. Scribe for the student if necessary.
Teach a, an, and the as adjectives. Student may use the term article if
that is what they are using in school, but tell them the article functions as
an adjective.
Teach possessive adjectives. These possible adjectives show ownership
such as my, his, our. These are possessive pronouns that are
functioning as adjectives.
Provide simple sentences such as: The hungry, brown dog ate. Have the
student read the sentence, analyze and label the sentence, diagram the
sentence and read the sentence from the diagram. Always have student
draw an arrow from the adjective to the noun it describes.
Show the student a variety of pictures and ask student to write simple
sentences with adjectives that describe subjects and action verbs.
Analyze, label and diagram these sentences. Have the student identify the
simple subject, simple predicate and the adjectives in each of his/her
sentences.
Make sure your sentences have action verbs and not linking verbs. The
adjectives should always come before the noun it modifies and not after
unless you are using a prepositional phrase as an adjective modifier.
When asking a student to identify and diagram the parts of speech in a
sentence, remember to only include the parts of speech you have
already taught the student.
Always identify the nouns and verbs in a sentence first. Then have the
student find the nouns and identify the adjectives that modify the
nouns. Have the student draw an arrow from each adjective to the
noun it modifies.
Sample sentences the student might write:
SS
SP
Six mean dogs barked.
Adj.
adj
Noun
SS
action verb
SP
The two women ate.
Adj.
DII December 2011
adj.
Noun
act. verb